"What have I been doing for the last three months?" Sun Tongyu asked with a grave expression after he quickly familiarized himself with the settings of the Jiangnan Mall.
Indeed, he had no idea what the meaning of his existence had been for the past few months, as the Taobao mall he wanted to build had already been created by someone else.
Not only that, but this mall was better and more comprehensive than Taobao, even including the Taobao Wallet, which he had only envisioned.
Initially, Sun Tongyu thought someone might have stolen his idea. However, after seeing the Jiangnan Mall, he realized that it was impossible for someone to have stolen it before him; it was merely a coincidence of shared ideas.
"Boss, what should we do next?" Sun Tongyu asked, feeling a sense of unwillingness.
"This is actually a question I wanted to ask you. Do you have any ideas...?" Old Ma Ge asked Sun Tongyu instead, as he was the one who understood their competitor the best.
"There's almost no way!" Sun Tongyu said through gritted teeth. "We've lost the first-mover advantage. If we could have launched a month earlier, or even at the same time, I would have been confident in competing with Jiangnan Group."
"But now that we've lost the initiative, the opponent has already occupied a large market share. It's almost impossible for us to regain it!"
"Don't be so desperate!" Old Ma Ge frowned. "QQ also dominated the entire market back then, but it was still overturned by 00. If 00 could do it, can't we?"
"00 was backed by Jiangnan Group, and we are now trying to overturn Jiangnan Group. The difficulty is completely different!" Sun Tongyu said subconsciously. "Boss, I think we still need to find a way to take a different path!"
Hearing Sun Tongyu's unconfident words, Old Ma Ge was a little displeased, but he still asked, "How to take a different path?"
"Jiangnan Mall currently occupies a large and comprehensive market. If we want to do the same, unless we use several times the capital to forcibly occupy the market, it's impossible. This would likely require billions or even tens of billions of funds, which is difficult for us to achieve."
"Conversely, we can focus on specializing in one category. The biggest weakness of a 'large and comprehensive' platform is its inability to excel in any single category. Therefore, we can concentrate all our efforts on operating one category well, such as digital products or large home appliances. Both of these require very close ties with manufacturers, and it's difficult for individual sellers to enter these industries."
"After all, only large factories can produce these types of goods, and they are highly technical. Small businesses find it difficult to enter these industries. When we were operating Alibaba, we had already established cooperative relationships with many relevant domestic enterprises and had rich human resources. Therefore, we can fully leverage this advantage to build strength in the digital products and home appliance categories."
"Once we become the market leader in these two categories, we will have our own base, which we can use to continuously compete with Jiangnan Group and eventually seize opportunities to defeat our opponent by capitalizing on their mistakes!" Sun Tongyu expounded his thoughts in one go.
Sun Tongyu truly was the founder of Taobao. Even before he had truly started operating Taobao, his insight into the entire e-commerce industry was astonishing.
If Dong Ge were present, he would have been amazed by Sun Tongyu's words and felt that his own ideas had been completely seen through by the other party.
Sun Tongyu's strategies were excellent. If Old Ma Ge had executed them immediately, it would have been a viable opportunity to become JD.com.
However, Old Ma Ge was not content. Because if he chose to focus on operating one or two categories as Sun Tongyu suggested, it would be equivalent to handing over a large portion of the market to his competitor and contentedly settling for being second best. How could the proud Old Ma Ge tolerate this?
Old Ma Ge remembered the first time he met Huang He more than a year ago and recalled Huang He's "five small goals." At that time, Old Ma Ge thought it was complete nonsense. But looking at it now, it was likely he himself who had become the nonsense.
At least Huang He was richer than him now.
"Old Sun, think again, are there really no other ways for us to rise?" Old Ma Ge asked again.
"Then the only way is the first method I mentioned: spend money, spend money madly!" Sun Tongyu sighed. "I've looked at Jiangnan Mall's recent business war history and found that their business logic is very simple: use low prices to attract customers and make them users."
"So, if we can offer even lower prices to attract customers, we can decisively defeat Jiangnan Mall."
"As far as I know, Jiangnan Mall's prices are already frighteningly low. Do you have a way to make our prices even lower than the opponent's by controlling costs?" Old Ma Ge asked.
"It's impossible. No matter how much costs are controlled, the cost price is there. Moreover, Jiangnan Mall also has its own self-operated Jiangnan Express, which gives it a significant advantage in shipping costs. Controlling costs is impossible."
"Furthermore, we are not the ones controlling costs; it's the merchants themselves. Merchants decide their own prices. Given the stable pricing system of Jiangnan Mall, merchants are unlikely to willingly come to our platform and help us attract users with lower prices!"
"So the only way is, in a word: subsidies!"
"'Subsidies?'" Old Ma Ge repeated the two words.
"That's right, subsidies. We promise all merchants that as long as they sell goods on our platform and lower their prices to 90% of Taobao's platform prices, we will subsidize them with an additional 15% of their revenue."
"This way, merchants can actually earn 5% more profit on our platform than on Jiangnan Mall. Then merchants will naturally flock to us, abandoning Jiangnan Mall, and our Taobao platform can naturally counterattack against the trend!" Sun Tongyu said.
Well, if Huang Zheng were here, he would undoubtedly exclaim that Sun Tongyu was his kindred spirit. This was exactly the logic of Pinduoduo.
This shows how brilliant Sun Tongyu was. Not only did he create Taobao, but he also coincidentally laid out the concepts of JD.com and Pinduoduo.
Don't think I'm exaggerating Sun Tongyu's abilities, because this is exactly what Sun Tongyu did historically.
Sun Tongyu's story is very magical and another legend in the history of the internet.
Sun Tongyu was originally an advertising salesman. In 1995, he went to Alibaba, which had just been founded by Old Ma Ge, intending to persuade them to invest in advertising.
As a result, in a short period, he was won over by Old Ma Ge. He resigned and joined Old Ma Ge's team, becoming one of the Eighteen Arhats. He also brought his wife, Peng Lei, with him. Both husband and wife became one of the Eighteen Arhats.
Later, Sun Tongyu remained loyal to Old Ma Ge and gradually became the second-in-command of the team, leading the team to spend three months in seclusion to create Taobao.
Afterward, Sun Tongyu spent about five years, by 2008, making Taobao the undisputed king of China's e-commerce industry, with no one able to compete with Taobao.
But no one expected that, without any warning, Old Ma Ge announced that Sun Tongyu would go to the United States to study for two years, with paid leave. The conditions appeared quite favorable.
However, taking paid leave for two years from the position of Taobao's helmsman, and going to distant America, any fool knew that by the time he returned in two years, Taobao would already belong to someone else.
It is said that when Sun Tongyu received this order, he was stunned because he had not received any prior notice. He was holding a meeting with his subordinates, arranging the upcoming work and tasks, and then in the next moment, he learned that he was going to study in the United States for two years.
This was a perfectly executed "offering wine to dismiss the military power." Later, Old Ma Ge's supporters would boast about how successful and wise this decision was.
Three days after receiving the order, Sun Tongyu packed his bags and went to the United States for further study. After receiving two years of salary, Sun Tongyu directly announced his resignation and severed ties with the "Forty Thieves," becoming one of the few of the Eighteen Arhats who went their separate ways.
But did you think Sun Tongyu disappeared after that?
Of course not, otherwise, I wouldn't have needed to write these words.
Legend has it that Sun Tongyu was about to take a flight at the Capital International Airport before going to the United States, with a layover of about five hours.
At that time, Dong Ge, who was in the capital, learned of this news and rushed to the airport personally. He invited Sun Tongyu to a meal at the most luxurious restaurant near the airport, and the two chatted for nearly two hours.
At that time, JD.com had already started its e-commerce business, but it was so suppressed by Taobao that it could barely breathe. Anyone could see that JD.com had no future at that time, and many people were already estimating how long JD.com could last before going bankrupt.
As a result, after this meal, JD.com began to quietly change its business strategy: to invest all its efforts into the categories of digital products and large home appliances.
Because JD.com was originally the largest distributor of optical and magnetic products in the country, and it had received investment from Japan, they had great resource advantages in some digital and home appliance products.
Secondly, JD.com had started building its own logistics system in 2007. However, at that time, the company was heavily criticized internally, as many felt that such a system was completely unnecessary.
After all, a logistics system was too expensive, and it was much more convenient to entrust it to other county-level express companies. If JD.com had the scale of Taobao at that time, building its own express company would have been feasible.
But the problem was that JD.com's daily order volume was less than 10,000 at that time. Under such circumstances, planning to build a logistics system was simply courting death.
After talking with Sun Tongyu, Dong Ge became resolute in his decision to stick to the strategy of building his own logistics system, while abandoning other product categories. He would solidify his position in digital products and devote all his energy to connecting with the home appliance channels. He communicated with many domestic and international home appliance companies, almost begging them to open direct stores on JD.com, while offering slightly lower prices than offline.
As a result, the facts proved how wise Dong Ge's decision was.
Because at that time, there were many scams in Taobao's digital product industry, and one could easily fall into various traps, whether it was refurbished second-hand goods or outright counterfeit and shoddy private label goods. At that time, Chinese people's ability to distinguish digital products was insufficient, which meant that buying digital products on Taobao had a high probability of being ripped off.
At the same time, the home appliance industry was always reluctant to enter e-commerce channels because they believed that entering e-commerce channels would harm the interests of their distributors, reduce their profits, and bring about all sorts of trouble.
After all, there were only so many competitors in the home appliance industry. The number of recognizable brands in China was only a dozen or so, unlike other industries where having tens of thousands of brands was normal.
It was easy for them to reach an unspoken understanding, and there was no need to reduce their own profits to open up e-commerce channels. That would be foolish.
Therefore, Taobao's performance in these two industries had always been relatively poor, but since there were no other competitors for comparison, consumers had to accept it.
As for Taobao's logistics system... well, they didn't have one. Merchants could cooperate with express companies themselves. If any problems occurred in this process, it naturally had nothing to do with Taobao, as these express companies were not found by Taobao.
From this, it can be seen that these were several fatal weaknesses of Taobao at that time, and JD.com seized all these weaknesses, eventually surviving, and relying on the reputation of these two categories, as well as the impeccable service of JD Logistics, ultimately becoming a thorn in Taobao's side that could not be removed.
Although it was a lifelong eternal second place, its total market value exceeded 100 billion yuan.
Of course, this is just an industry legend, and no insider has ever admitted to such a two-hour meal.
However, Sun Tongyu's counterattack later was a solid fact.
In 2015, Pinduoduo was founded and received its first angel investment that year, and this investor was Sun Tongyu. It is said that he personally tutored Huang Zheng, helping him transform from a platform specializing in fresh produce to an all-category e-commerce platform.
At the same time, the first season of Dragon TV's "Extreme Challenge" premiered in China. After watching the first episode, Sun Tongyu immediately called Huang Zheng and told him to invest all his advertising budget into the "Extreme Challenge" program. He also spent money to have that Zhu Bishui create a catchy Pinduoduo song in less than two hours, which became a plug-in advertisement for the show.
The result was that Pinduoduo became famous overnight, letting countless Chinese people know that there was a platform called Pinduoduo in the world, successfully helping Pinduoduo take its first step.
Subsequently, he proposed the concept of low prices and small merchants.
At that time, Taobao was focusing on Tmall Mall and high-quality products, clearing out a large number of small and medium-sized merchants from the Taobao platform.
While this indeed improved the overall quality of Taobao's products, it also caused Taobao to lose its original characteristic of "good quality and low price."
At the same time, by leveraging the competition psychology among internet giants, he courted Tencent and other behemoths to join, allowing Tencent to invest a large sum of money. Thus, Huang Zheng unleashed the super weapon of "10 billion yuan subsidies."
This way, Pinduoduo had both a wide variety of small, cheap items,
and also had a large number of genuine products under the "10 billion yuan subsidies," giving Pinduoduo a comprehensive price advantage. Later, it introduced the "group buying" tactic, which forcibly carved out a large market share from Taobao, and the fastest pace drove JD.com to third place, achieving astonishing results.
Of course, such an operation had significant side effects. Pinduoduo's reputation became extremely bad, and there was a high risk of cash flow rupture in the future. However, it cannot be denied that after being dismissed from his position, Sun Tongyu successfully slapped his former employer in the face, which was like a "cool novel" script.
Back to the main topic. When Sun Tongyu presented the strategies of both JD.com and Pinduoduo to Old Ma Ge, Old Ma Ge himself could not make up his mind.
"Subsidize merchants, what's in it for us?" Old Ma Ge could not accept either of these methods.
The JD.com model was more reliable and operable, but it required willingly accepting being second best. Without decades, there was no hope of catching up.
The Pinduoduo model was fast, and it might be possible to turn the situation around in a few months. But the problem was, it required money, a lot of money, and this money was destined to be lost.
If it were 2015 now, Old Ma Ge would have been able to accept it. After all, during the Meituan and Didi wars, various capital spent tens of billions of funds just to fight for market control, and investors didn't mind, but continued to invest heavily, so there was no shortage of money. In that case, Old Ma Ge would have used the Pinduoduo model without hesitation.
But in 2003, Old Ma Ge didn't know that investors would be so foolish. Moreover, at this time, investment institutions still placed a high value on investment stability. These investment institutions would not approve of this method of burning money to occupy the market, as they could not predict that once an e-commerce company occupied the market, it would have an astonishing market value of trillions of dollars.
"Are there any other ways?" Old Ma Ge wanted to find a third way.
"No, at least I can't think of any other way!" Sun Tongyu sighed.
"Okay, thank you for your hard work. You have three days off. Go home and spend more time with your wife and children!" Old Ma Ge said. Sun Tongyu nodded. He was indeed very tired and needed to go home and rest well.
Sun Tongyu went home to rest, but Old Ma Ge could not. He was still desperately trying to find a third way.
If Sun Tongyu couldn't, it didn't mean Old Ma Ge couldn't. He was the king who led them forward. He would definitely think of a way.
Coincidentally, after staying up all night without sleep, and with his head becoming even more shiny, Old Ma Ge vaguely found a path, and that path was the bank.
Old Ma Ge discovered that Jiangnan Mall had another fatal weakness in its payment methods.
Currently, to make a payment on Jiangnan Mall, one needed to first top up the Jiangnan Wallet and then use the balance in the Jiangnan Wallet to purchase goods.
The methods for topping up were quite troublesome. Either one had to go directly to Jiangnan Mall's flagship stores nationwide to top up with cash.
Or one had to purchase various phone cards for top-ups.
Or one could top up through ICBC's online banking.
Although there seemed to be quite a few top-up channels, they were all rather inconvenient.
The first method required an extra trip to a flagship store, and many villages and towns in China did not have Jiangnan Mall flagship stores, so they could not top up in this way.
Topping up with phone cards was even more problematic. The telecommunication operators in between would take at least 30% of the fees. If you spent 100 yuan, you might only get 70 yuan in cash balance. Only a fool would do such a thing.
As for online game point cards, although they could charge a bit more, they would still be deducted.
As for ICBC's online banking top-up, this seemed to be the most convenient, but it required going through complex online banking procedures at the bank and going through various verification methods and complicated online operations when topping up.
80% of people in China could not handle such operations.
Finally, and most importantly, was the issue with the Jiangnan Wallet itself. It was actually very inconvenient to use and could sometimes be very infuriating.
For example, after traveling a long distance to a flagship store and topping up 100 yuan into the Jiangnan Wallet, and then buying 80 yuan worth of goods, there was still 20 yuan left.
When you next wanted to buy an item worth 40 yuan, you would find that the remaining 20 yuan was very awkward. You couldn't buy what you wanted with it, so it remained in the Jiangnan Wallet account, becoming a string of numbers.
If you wanted to use it, you had to go to a flagship store again and top up another 20 yuan.
So Old Ma Ge thought, if he could find a way to solve the problem in the payment process, allowing users to shop conveniently with just a bank account, then the shopping experience would definitely surpass Jiangnan Mall, and his own company would have the capital to compete with the opponent.
After figuring this out, Old Ma Ge became excited. He felt he was capable again.
Thus, Sun Tongyu, who was originally given three days off, only slept for one night at home. His wife had not returned home due to overtime work, but he received a call from Old Ma Ge asking him to return to the company immediately.
Although Sun Tongyu felt helpless, he had to return as quickly as possible and met the energetic Old Ma Ge.
"I have a way!" Old Ma Ge said. "I'll give you a new plan shortly. You need to go back and continue your secluded work immediately. Our existing Alipay functions are not enough. I need you to completely rebuild a new Alipay. At the same time, I will go and communicate and negotiate with some people. As long as we are determined to do it, there will be a way!!"